Beginner’s mind and the writer

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities,

but in the expert’s there are few.

— Shunryu Suzuki

I’ve only been at this creative writing thing for a year, but sometimes I forget that I’m a beginner. With that in mind, I’m trying to embrace and understand anew the concept of beginner’s mind. So in an attempt to wipe the slate clean, I’m going back to the beginning, or near beginning, of this writing journey by republishing a post from exactly a year ago. I post it to remind myself how much I need to still unlearn — and to remind me that I ain’t no guru.

Beginning again

Originally posted January 13, 2024 (a year ago today)

As I explore what it means to be a writer, I find myself trying to emerge from a culture that glamorizes the expert, the thought leader, the social media influencer, the advisor, the guru. 

It seems I’ll be forever emerging and never emerged, for this culture is like an oozy swamp that seems inseparable from modern consumerist society.

The Zen concept of beginner’s mind stands in stark contrast to our societal obsession with experts and expertise. And the more I explore beginner’s mind as an important ingredient to the writing practice, the more I am astonished by the contrast.

In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities,

but in the expert’s there are few.

— Shunryu Suzuki

Too often, we look for the experts, not the beginners. The experts have all the solutions, right?

Just take a quick spin around the block on social media. You’ll quickly discover a life hack, listicle or hot take for every conceivable problem you may have on the job or in your life. You’ll find self-proclaimed thought leaders proclaiming their expertise in post after post, on platform after platform. They have proven solutions on how to make more money, lose weight, get more organized, get in shape, write that best-selling novel, or become a better marketer or podcaster or the next TikTok sensation.

Too much baggage

A huge part of my struggle with cultivating a beginner’s mindset has to do with the baggage I bring along this journey. 

For well over 40 years, I’ve been — if not an expert — a practitioner of certain types of writing. I know some things about the craft. 

Over my career I’ve been a journalist, a public relations specialist, a marketer, a copy writer and editor, a magazine editor, a writer and editor of internal newsletters (both print and email), a speechwriter and speech editor, a ghost writer and ghost editor, and a writer of headlines and captions intended to attract the attention of a reader, a search engine, or both. 

I’m a published author of three books and one book chapter, and have had fiction published in a couple of literary magazines. Along the way, I’ve won a few awards for my efforts.

Also along the way, I’ve learned certain rules designed to make me and everyone else an effective writer. I studied journalism in college, learned the inverted pyramid and the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook. There and later, I studied the writings of many prolific and canonical writers of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays, and advertising copy.

I learned grammar — reluctantly at first, as a high school student, but later with an appreciation of the rules as conveyors of meaning and story. And after I learned enough about grammar, I learned about which rules could be bent and which could be broken.

As a journalist and later a public relations writer, the AP Stylebook was my bible. But I also learned the Chicago Manual of Style (required for the books I wrote) and how to properly cite other works in footnotes and endnotes. I’ve read The Elements of Style more times than I’ve watched The Godfather, which is a lot. Hell, I’ve even read Elements just for fun.

I say all of this not to brag, but to illustrate the amount of prior knowledge about writing and editing. A lot of baggage to set aside if I am to become a true beginner.

So. Where does one begin to cultivate beginner’s mind?

The journey

Contemplating all of this, I wrote in my journal recently:

Perhaps for the writer, beginner’s mind can begin with the notion of writing as a journey, an exploration with no specific destination in mind. Or at least no crystallized destination in mind. Instead of planning a trip to Iowa, say, I decide to journey north and see where the road leads.

Perhaps instead of creating an outline, a road map, of where we want the story to go, we just start writing and see where the story and characters take us. Somewhat like journaling. Somewhat like this practice today — writing as a journey, an exploration, an act of discovery. And if every day, every time we sit down to write, we begin with a kernel of an idea — “I’m going to explore beginner’s mind,” say — and see where that takes us, then perhaps we have begun as a beginner. Or if not a true, honest beginner, as an explorer of the blank, uncarted page, which is where all writing must begin.

— Andy’s journal, January 10, 2024

This is where I am today on this journey. I’m beginning a journey with a general direction in mind, but no specific destination mapped out. We’ll see how the trip evolves.

I’ve also found inspiration from these words from Lucy van Smit, writing on the website Writers & Artists.

Think of this [beginner’s mind] not as being childish, but childlike. Unselfconscious. Imaginative. Courageous. Playful.

— Lucy van Smit, “A Beginner’s Mind”

Ah, yes. Childlike, not childish. Full of wonder and imagination. That’s the best way to begin a journey.

As Jesus is reported to have said, one cannot enter the kingdom of heaven but as a child. 

So too for the writer who wishes to commit ideas to words on the blank page.

Notes

• Shunryu Suzuki quote from Zen Soup: Tasty Morsels of Wisdom from Great Minds East & West, by Laurence G. Boldt. Suzuki is credited with coining the term “beginner’s mind” in his book, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, originally published in 1971.
• According to one definition I find appealing, “having a beginner’s mind means having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and freedom from preconceptions when approaching anything. Beginner’s mind is actually the space where the mind does not know what to do. It is that delicious state when you are sure of nothing, yet completely fearless, totally available to the moment.”
• The reference to Jesus’s words about becoming as a child is derived from Matthew 18:3 of the New Testament.
• In my research for this post, I discovere that there are plenty of subject matter experts on the subject of beginner’s mind out there on the internet. There’s even a five-step program for attaining it. LOL. No topic is beyond the reach of a thought leader.

Image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay.